What do you want in paper?

Published 11:03 pm, Saturday, April 27, 2013

Every day, when putting together this sports section, I play a mental game that goes something like this:

I picture you picking up your newspaper, turning to the sports section and looking at the cover. Then I ask myself two questions:

What do you want to see?

And what do I want you to see?

My answers go a long way toward guiding our little corner of the newsroom through everyday decisions, like whether the Yankees game belongs on the front page. Or whether we should have a reporter covering a high school baseball game. Or whether the Siena basketball headline belongs above the fold.

They also shape a broader philosophy, one that keeps us focused on our core mission — the best possible coverage of Capital Region sports — but also recognizes the need to serve our readers' regional interests, like the Yankees and Giants.

Well, I'm now seven months into my tenure as sports editor, and I think it's time I stop asking myself what you want to see when you pick up your sports section.

It's time that I just ask you.

We've launched a survey on our website, timesunion.com, that I hope will help us better understand what you want from your sports section.

You can take the survey by visiting TimesUnion.com/SportsSurvey. The survey is, I promise, short enough to be completed during halftime of the Knicks game. But your answers could have real influence on our printed pages.

See, our sports market is tricky. If we did this survey in Buffalo or Syracuse, we can assume roughly 100 percent of readers would say they want coverage of the Bills or the Orange. But here, our interests are more diverse.

Parts of our community, for instance, are every bit as fanatical about college hockey as Syracuse folks are about their Orange. Others think the only hockey worth printing happens at Madison Square Garden.

We know many readers love Siena basketball and Saratoga horse racing. But we also know many are equally passionate about the Yankees and Giants — or the Mets, Red Sox, Jets, Knicks, Rangers, Bruins ... and well, you get the idea.

There's no magic algorithm for deciding which among these wide-ranging subjects deserves the most coverage on any given day. But I would like some hard data to help guide our decisions.

The survey, I hope, will lead to more informed answers.

So please, take a moment to respond to our survey and ask yourself: What do you want to see when you pick up the sports section?